Security for Digital Transformation

Every organization has a digital agenda. Or at least they should have one. But there is digital on the inside and then there is digital in everything you do.

The true digital enterprise extends beyond the physical entity to influence every operation, every partner, every supplier, and every customer. It changes the culture of the organization and starts to generate its own new service lines. And this is where the IT department loses control.

Does digital mean a new role for IT?

A digital enterprise puts more responsibility in the hands of service lines, partners, and even customers. These groups take on digital tasks and complete activities away from the core. With such an extended digital footprint, how do IT departments stay on top of DevOps and security?

Security may once have been the sole preserve of the IT department but not any more. At the same time, heads of service are taking more responsibility for implementing new digital technologies and need to know where the risks lie. They need a trusted advisor and that is where IT departments can step in.

With digitization comes the growing use of cloud services. Together with existing forms of IT this becomes hybrid or bimodal IT. And it is these organization-specific combinations that then translate into wildly different standards of security. But where these new security challenges arise the IT department can add value here too. Using previous experiences, it can become the standard bearer of security best practice in digital transformation. Both inside and outside the organization.

Setting security in a business context

Most service owners, partners, and customers understand digital. But they still need support to know where the anomalies are, where the risks lie, and how to recover quickly from any downtime. Fundamentally, they just want their services to stay up-and-running.

The IT department can support all of this. It can apply risk management that strikes that careful balance between enabling flexible, fast services and stopping threats from bringing down service lines. But to do this effectively, it will have to relinquish its traditional role and accept that others will need to be trained in digital security too.

What does this mean for your organization?

As the organization transitions to a digital enterprise, its footprint extends beyond old boundaries. So the security that is used to protect services must be flexible. This means building intelligence-led security into every digital activity from the beginning. It means changing mindsets so that security is not an afterthought or the role of one individual or department.

The IT department can no longer stay in control of security. But it can influence security controls. Especially if it embraces its new role as a quality controller and knowledge providers to others. That way it can ensure digital security is as successful as the digital enterprise it sets out to protect.